Justin Townes Earle

On “White Gardenias,” Justin Townes Earle's favorite song from his September 2014 album “Single Mothers,” the narrator is searching for a woman he last saw the previous week. As a slide guitar moans in the background, the Nashville-based folk singer-songwriter wonders, “Maybe she went back to Baltimore.”

She was a real person, Earle explained last week, but the two never met. It was Billie Holiday, a singer he always considered “extremely intriguing.”

“Louis Armstrong showed us how to get behind the beat, and she showed us how far we could take it,” Earle said on the phone from a tour stop in South Carolina....

Related "Justin Townes Earle" Articles

On “White Gardenias,” Justin Townes Earle's favorite song from his September 2014 album “Single Mothers,” the narrator is searching for a woman he last saw the previous week. As a slide guitar moans in the background, the Nashville-based folk...

On most days, and in the long run, culture may be upstream from politics. But Tuesday is Election Day, and I suspect even the most culturally-obsessed of us will prioritize the monumental decisions Americans are making collectively -- if fractiously --...